° Family-owned rental properties, São Paulo city, Brazil

The starting point

Some of the properties are let directly, others through letting agencies that keep a commission and transfer the rest. Everything lived in one spreadsheet with dozens of tabs, formulas and macros: the monthly charges, the bank slips, who had paid, the water bill split across the units of a condominium and whether each agency's transfer matched. The whole team needed the same file at the same time, a single mistake could corrupt the financial data, and the agencies' statements were only checked against the total.

What we changed

Properties and contracts

We built a module in Odoo for properties, leases, tenants, condominiums and agencies, with a personal login for everyone on the team. Contract status and the next rent adjustment date update themselves every day, so an ended lease is never billed again.

Monthly billing

The month's charges are created as one run from the active leases. For each charge the bank issues a combined Boleto and PIX, the system checks at the bank whether it was paid, and tenants get a reminder by e-mail containing the PIX code and the barcode. The runs work one charge at a time with a live progress bar.

Water and expenses

A condominium's water bill is split across its occupied units, by number of residents or equally, and only billed once it is confirmed. One-off expenses per property go into a separate expense charge on the same billing path.

Agency statements

The agencies' PDF statements are read by the system, each agency's property codes are matched to the properties, with suggestions by similar address, and for every property and month the expected transfer, net of commission and pro-rated, is compared with the amount actually received. A dashboard shows billing and arrears, the agencies and the occupancy of the condominiums.